Have you seen the movie PI? It's about this mathematician that goes mad in the search for a number, seeing it everywhere.

Generalizing code is a lot like numerology. Once you know about the principle of removing duplication, you start seeing it everywhere. And when you see it, you cannot help yourself, you just have to get rid of that duplication. Nast...(more)

In my experience, these are some characteristics of bad software engineers:

1) The Stack Overflow bot: This person ran into an error, did a quick Google search and applied the first solution they found. The problem here is not that of copying from Stack Overflow. I think there are more solutions on Stack Overflow than any reference guide or manual. Don't...(more)